I used to keep goldfish back in Australia some years ago and I would buy them plants for their tank. The goldfish saw these plants as yet another source of food since they are omnivores.

I asked the guy in the pet shop what I should do, other than buy plastic plants to decorate their tank and he recommended putting slices of zucchini in the tank.

So next visit to the supermarket I purchased a zucchini for this purpose and into the tank went what I thought was a nice piece for the fish.

By the next day the water was putrid. The smell was awful and the water went a white cloudy colour. I had to change the water completely, clean out the tank and replace a goldfish.

The next time I visited an organic grocery store, I purchased a zucchini and put a slice into the tank. Everything was fine. Goldfish enjoyed water remained clear and habitable.

I thought about the first repeating the zucchini experiment because I thought perhaps I just got a bad zucchini before damning all zucchini from the supermarket to hell based on one experiment was a bad idea. So I purchased another one from the same supermarket and into the water went a slice and exactly the same deal, the next day the water was putrid again and had to be replaced.

I wondered whether I was just lucky the first time with the organic store and again I repeated that experiment but the water remained fine again after giving the goldfish a piece of zucchini.

Again, this was years ago in Australia.

In Australia, a number of years ago I bought some KFC and with the chicken came some mashed potatoes which I didn't want so I gave them to my dogs, who loved human food.

So for a treat I thought they would like these and as normal there was the usual excitement of receiving a treat - and then i set it before them outside.

They both looked up at me with utter disappointment, the kind of disappointment that said: we thought you were giving us human food.

In school we were taught the difference between poison water holes in the desert was insects. If the water is good, there will be insects about it, if its bad, there will be no insects.

So I left the mashed potatoes sit there for 3 days. Not a bird, not an insect, not a curious ant, not a dog, or a cat went anywhere near the 'mashed potatoes'. And there was no mold growing on it either.

I have no idea if they used a different recipe in Australia and it was a number of years ago, but whatever was in there, it was not real food.